iOS Video.app can natively handle subtitles that have been muxed into the movie. I use iFlicks to add my media into Plex and iTunes on my Mac and it muxes in the subtitles in seconds. Transferring to the videos.app on my iPhone via iTunes it plays back fine and I can turn subs on and off.
However with plex I need to wait for the whole video to convert (15 mins plus).
Could we add support for plex on iOS to natively support the subtitles without converting?
Really? This doesnt bug anyone else? Almost every movie I have has some sort of subtitles in a scene and needs to spend half an hour re-encoding the whole movie. Whereas other apps on my iphone play fine without reencoding
Can you provide details on what codecs are used and what type of subtitle you are using? I do not use the IOS version, but I see no reason for the app to wait for the entire movie to get encoded first. The app does not even run that way. Plex encodes the file in chuncks and sends the data to the app in chunks. The app should start playing the file once it receives a few of these chunks.
iOS Video.app can natively handle subtitles that have been muxed into the movie. I use iFlicks to add my media into Plex and iTunes on my Mac and it muxes in the subtitles in seconds. Transferring to the videos.app on my iPhone via iTunes it plays back fine and I can turn subs on and off.
However with plex I need to wait for the whole video to convert (15 mins plus).
Could we add support for plex on iOS to natively support the subtitles without converting?
Are you doing standard playback or are you talking about plex sync?
I'd imagine RandmTask is talking about syncing. I've experienced the same using Plex Sync and always wondered.
Yes I am talking about syncing
Either mp4 with an .srt file or an .m4v that has been remuxed from an mp4/srt the result is the same
In Plex Media Server (latest OS X version):
Settings > Server > Languages > Subtitles > Aways Enabled - Video is reencoded when syncing and subtitles available
Settings > Server > Languages > Subtitles > Manually Selected - No conversion, however there are no longer subtitles available in iOS Plex after syncing
From memory Android does not do this, it has an option to locally use srt files without transcoding. Seems like a massive waste of CPU resources and time for this not to be implemented.
iOS plays internal tx3g subs natively not SRT files as far as i know ( i am not an iOS user ). i agree it should be not burn tx3g those into the video track. I know one of the other ninja who uses iOS brought this up just the other day.
From memory Android does not do this, it has an option to locally use srt files without transcoding. Seems like a massive waste of CPU resources and time for this not to be implemented.
android does burn subtitles into video track also for internal srts. it can only play them without transcoding natively when they are a separate file. any other types of subs besides external SRTs are burned in during the transcode
I do not believe external srt files are synced, so if you want subtitles they need to be burned in. Embedded subtitles are not included in a transcoded stream as an individual subtitle stream so these also need to get burned in if you want subtitles. The always enable setting is what tells PMS that you want subtitles. I have not seen a way to select it manually at the time you tell it to sync.
I should have clarified I didn’t mean external srt files play in videos.app on iOS. I meant when subtitles are muxed into the MP4 file the resulting video file can be played back in the videos.app. The process takes about 30 seconds to mix rather than 30 minutes to transcode.
It seems there are very few movies nowadays that don’t have at least one scene in a foreign language or alien language etc which requires subtitles. Even many TV shows (Outlander, Game of Thrones, Doctor Who) have subtitled scenes.
FYI this feature request seems to be asking for the same thing and already has more votes. so in the interest of not splitting votes i suggest voting for that one if you have not.
actually i missed your last post seem they are different requests
I actually made a post in that thread with a few questions, so if anyone wants to respond there, please do!
Early 2021 clean-up: implemented (available w/ current client and new player)
